It isn't hard to find out what new hardware and software Mac users are pining for. All you have to do is ask.

With the help of market research firm Karlin Associates, we surveyed 824
Macworld
subscribers during the last week of November 2001. We asked these readers to name the most important Apple product to ship last year. Then we asked them to look ahead to 2002 and tell us the one product they wanted to see released this year, and what software they wanted to appear in OS X-native form.

Clearly, 2001 was a good year for Apple portables. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed cited the Titanium PowerBook G4 or the redesigned iBook as the most important Apple product of the past year.

As for the year ahead, respondents seemed to feel a need for speed. A Power Mac G5, a redesigned iMac, and a Mac with a 1GHz processor topped the 2002 wish list of our survey participants.

As for OS X-native software, the pressure's on Adobe. Nearly three-fourths of those surveyed chimed in wanting a native version of Photoshop. And 50 percent of them want Photoshop to run in OS X as soon as possible. It was the overwhelming choice among our survey participants. Meanwhile, those readers who called for a native version of Final Cut Pro didn't have to wait long--a month after we conducted our survey, Apple released an OS X-native update to the video-editing application.